Announcement: Changes to node payout rates as of December 1st 2023 (Open for comment)

Announcements
296

You could. Yes. And for that reason, i still opt for some payment for egress, for SNOs.

Actually, we come close to the situation,
as of egress for SNOs recently went down from $6 to $2/TB,
so some might even start capping the egress already,
and how does STORj can know it?
if they don’t have a mechanism to keep SNOs to their words?
of min. 5Mbps upstream from the agreement?

But still, $2/TB egress for SNOs, and $0,5/TB egress
could be enough to NOT cap.
DEPENDING on how much that egress would be in a total of $ a month,
And if the connection would handle it.
That’s the subject of balance, what those values optimally should be,
for SNOs not to cap the egress traffic.

297

backblaze iz not unlimited free egress

*Up to 3x of average monthly data stored.

Cloud Storage Pricing (backblaze.com)

298

I think with V2 Storj has learned that whenever incentives of Storj and node operators aren’t aligned, you create a cat and mouse game. Storj wanting to maximize upload speeds, but there being no benefit for node operators would create such a cat and mouse game. Nodes trying to get away with the minimum and Storj trying to still get the maximum out of it in some way. You can try to come up with technical solutions, but it’s a whole lot easier to just have a monetary incentive in place so that nodes benefit from delivering the best service and it would save you all the trouble. That way it’s self optimizing.

299

it’s not so well self optimizing at the moment, if the traffic is still low.
(And will be low, if its still for $7/TB IMHO.)
it’s not so well self optimizing, when the pay for egress falls down only for SNOs and not for STORJ inc, and the traffic is still low.
So yea a cat mouse game is played BUT at current state.
That puts SNOs in discriminated positions.
A reforms are needed. But not wanted.
That’s why we had a strike threat recently.
I’m kinda disappointed they did not push more.
That was the only hope to forge a will for reforms.

301

Oh, Nice hint! Thx!
So whatever the programing makes possible, and as we agreed it makes possible a LOT, could be implemented, to successfully corner such capping ideas.
for example. Then some measuring could be implemented in storagenode installer itself on SNOs nodes, so it would measure traffic to random other SNOs.
As far as i know modifying the installer is forbidden in TOS? Despite its open source.
Or can that mechanism can be secured, im not the best tech guy for this specifics, but i know, the anti-cheat detection nowadays is from another level, so the STORJ could implement some ideas too.
Whatever, a solution in programing could be found.

Yea egress could be free if with some limits to meet SNOs capability’s. Those limits could be even ever adjustable. Like not more than 5 times the SNOs storage space, or SNOs could define own number in config file. BUT this option only with HIGHER pay to SNOs for storage/TB, and much HIGHER requires for minimum upstream - so no incentive to keep egress high, penalty only
that’s why i would much likely prefer:

a $1-2/TB egress for SNOs, (and a +15 to 25% margin for STORJ inc.) with combination of
LOW limit like 5Mbps upstream but WITH STILL incentive for as much high upstream as possible, by paying for it, and bringing a LOT of traffic for the network.
And You can’t have a lot of traffic, if it’s relatively expensive, despite STORJ on it’s promo video shows, it’s cheap.

Maybe it’s cheap - for a big guys!
But big guys don’t want it!

because of CERTIFICATES they need, that’s why STORJ created commercial SNOs!
And there You have it, a crazy wheel for classical SNOs,
who are in bad position, hoping that egress will somehow magically appear!
with a price of $7/TB! for a service …
While there are other cloud services, that offers it even for 1,19 Euro egress
and off the street, You don’t have to be big, to sign up for it.

303

i program other things, and i asure You IT CAN BE DONE. To prevent You from capping only test severs, Just like anticheats are made to counter chating in games like bots and hacks. Period. Im out im bussy.

304

Storj should not mimick idiotic and desperate Backblaze cargo cult stunts, where they try to repeat Wasabis success. I lose respect to this company much further I thought was humanly possible every time they do something stupid like this.

Free egress of 3x data stored is a horrible idea for customers. That means customers pay for some egress regardless of whether they use it or not, based on what other customers use. It just rolled in into cost of storage. No thank you. I’d rather pay for what I use.

Misalignment of incentives was already discussed, and this is the single reason why this won’t work. Regardless of tech solutions. Yes, everything is possible with tech, including defeating any tech measures that go against individual interests.

Today storj cost structure strikes a good balance between verbosity (I.e. not charging per api call) and reflecting actual costs that matter to drive customer and SNO behavior. Hiding one cost in another only makes things more complex, more prone to abuse, and harder to manage; and therefore more expensive.

306

Keep it civil, boys… :slight_smile:

307

So, this is exactly the cat and mouse game I was referring to.

So you could just limit the traffic after installing.

A TOS that can’t be enforced is useless. Open source software can always be modded, including removing any anti-cheat measures. But even more, it’s an open protocol too, you could build your own node software that speaks Store and do whatever you like.

Furthermore, even if a technical solution could be found, that will only ensure a minimum acceptable speed. And won’t encourage any node operator to do more than that.

In the end there is no possible technical solution that won’t be worked around in one way or the other to deliver just the minimal amount of speed required, leading to slower downloads in general.

Nothing beats aligning incentives.

You know… A mic drop moment like that only works if it’s supported by an undeniable argument. Not just repeating one that has already been debunked and adding all caps.

Maybe it can be done to ensure a minimum level of service. But it is very clearly not a simple problem to solve and that result would still not be desirable. An aligned incentive automatically causes node operators to strive for the maximum level of service, which no technical solution could ever get to because that maximum is different for every setup/connection.

308

“Seeing that I don’t get paid for egress, I contacted my ISP and downgraded my connection and as it so happens, I got a plan where the upload bandwidth is exactly the minimum in the TOS + 10%”
Would Storj demand me to send a copy of the contract to prove it? Would Storj contact my ISP to confirm and I actually changed the plan and not just limited the bandwidth to Storj?

There are multiple ways to limit the bandwidth without touching the node software or even the VM it runs in. Honestly, altering the node software would be the most difficult way to do it.

Can you figure out a way to detect whether the bandwitdth is limited by my ISP or by myself (given that I can use the same exact method to do it)?

309

I think Anticheats is not the best comparison. Cheating destroys the fun in the game for the real players and this in turn hurts the sales of the game.

For Storj it doesn’t hurt other SNOs and also it doesn’t hurt Storj itself. It may hurt some customers. Additionally we are probably talking about a small group of SNOs which would limit their upload.

Now the big question is: Is it worth to sink a lot of dev resources into this if its only to fight a small group of SNOs to benefit a small group of customers? These customers are probably large and may move to the commercial network with the promise of higher download speeds.

I think it’s not worth it.

310

Going back to my point - there is a very straightforward way that Storj could incentivize good upload performance - just pay a reasonable amount for egress!

The point that seems to be missed here is that Storj doesn’t necessarily need to pay SNOs in the same way that they structure customer-facing pricing.

311

I don’t have any QoS to limit my traffic so I will likely just switch the local interface mode from 1Gbps to 100Mbps

313

the problem is… to do that anticheat… requires manpower to program, requires maintenance, requires cpu processing power too… who’s paying for that?.. storj?.. then they will need to take more cut of the revenue and you get less anyway

314

the payment structure… unfortunately needs to be aligned… else storj risks having to pay out of pocket should the situation not align… e.g. promising to pay storj operators $2 per TB stored regardless of egress, instead of $1.5 per TB + egress cost… while still maintaining that same customer-facing price… if the situation comes around that more data are stored and less egress happens… storj has to pay out of pocket… which then leads to us questioning why they draw on reserves… its just kicking the can down a different path

suffice to say… we are like workers working for a big firm… we are paid a certain amount of salary… the firm determines it… if the firm decides to change it because of extraneous circumstances (poor economy outlook, competition etc) , they change it… you don’t like the new salary… you find a better job maybe… or you stick around and hope the firm does better and rewards you for being loyal… (although job loyalty isn’t really a big thing nowadays)

315

It is impossible to detect if the limiting is done by the ISP (as normal part of operations to limit my connection bandwidth to what I paid for) and something that I would use to limit just the bandwidth of the node (using pretty much the same tools as the ISP would use).

Sure, I could give root access to the VM where my node runs and it would still be impossible to determine that. After all, I can limit the bandwidth on my router, on the hypervisor or, if the node ran on bare metal, on the switch port .

316

You’re contradicting your own point. Employees are rarely paid in proportion to the value they bring - an hourly wage is the same regardless of how much value those hours brought in.

Storj does not need to align them - after all, many cloud providers offer free ingress, despite the fact that they’re paying (in some way or another) for said ingress. They simply need to structure them in a way that is profitable, regardless of whether that is “aligned” or not. I’d honestly rather they pay a little less for storage if it means they pay more for egress.

As an example, a store might choose to offer free shipping, despite the fact that they obvious have to pay for that.

317

this is very bad idea, lot of storage client use are backups, so they can be never downloaded.
so much better to get for storing it more than getting bigger from nothing.

318

That would be a relevant point… If we were talking about employees. SNOs are suppliers, paid for the supply of space and bandwidth.

319

well i was thinking of something similiar to how audit is being run now… since it can only be proven when it is audited from external… otherwise we can’t prevent tampering from happening… and thats why i inferred there will be additional costs to bear on storj’s end.